It’s impossible to open a paper or
watch the news today, without being bombarded
with messages on the importance of recycling
on the environment. Yet barely a day goes
past when we are not also bombarded with
letters, leaflets and flyers which bear
no relevance or interest to us or our circumstances.
Indeed, frequently not even our names are
spelt correctly!
It is clear that these have cascaded out,
with no thought or real consideration of
whether the message is relevant to our specific
needs, in the vague hope that amongst the
millions of recipients, a few may be interested.
At least, as Financial Advisers, we’re
not guilty of such wanton disregard for
the environment, are we?
Well, the simple truth is that most advisers
do little in the way of marketing to their
clients and, when they do, it tends to be
of the broad brush approach opposed to the
targeted variety.
Marketing can take two forms; new client/business
acquisition and client servicing. In each
case however, the key is to use relevant
information about a client and then to target
the message or communication to the specific
area of interest. Below, we will consider
some of the aspects of client servicing.
A majority of the advisers we speak to
will admit that they are poor at proactive
client communication, with “I’m
simply too busy” being a common refrain.
As a consequence, advisers are constantly
reacting to clients needs, rather than proactively
identifying and presenting them to their
clients.
Why is this? Well, there could be a number
of reasons:
- Not having the information
- Not having a means of utilising it
- Not having the time
- Not having any need
Dealing with these in turn, we can first
consider that advisers have a huge amount
of information about their clients. Indeed,
the Factfind process is probably the most
comprehensive marketing tool ever created
but, in truth, how many of us use the information
gathered after the initial recommendations
and how is this kept up to date? Furthermore,
the information about client’s existing
holdings offers a huge range of opportunities,
including re-broking, end of fixed rates,
inappropriate contracts and many more. So
we can hardly claim not to have the information.
In truth therefore, it’s much more
the case that we don’t have an effective
way of using it. Yet many advisers religiously
enter all this information into a back office
system, but never use it for anything. A
modern back office system should allow an
adviser to quickly search for relevant opportunities
and then, vitally, use this to undertake
a campaign in minutes, with built-in tracking
and analysis of success. Do you honestly
know what marketing is profitable and what
isn’t?
As for not having time, this could simply
be a case of the wrong or poor use of technology,
as creating and executing a campaign should
only take minutes, yet the dividends it
can pay both in new business and client
satisfaction are incalculable.
This leaves us with not having any need.
Ignoring for a moment the requirements of
the Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) regime,
of one thing you can be certain: In a world
of increasingly accessible information,
if you’re not communicating with your
clients – somebody else will be.
For help in how to target your marketing
campaigns, please contact our Training team
on 01279 756086 or send
an email to: training@quaysoftware.co.uk
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